SAIC Motor has established joint ventures with Volkswagen and GM, which has made great contributions to the development of China's automobile industry. In the annual sales ranking of car companies, SAIC Motor Group has occupied the top position for many years, and no car company has been able to shake its sharp edge for 15 consecutive years.
Compared with the highlight performance of the entire group, the performance of SAIC Passenger Cars is inevitably lamentable. As of the end of November 2021, SAIC's cumulative sales of passenger cars were 695,000 units, while the cumulative sales of independent brands such as Geely and Great Wall have already exceeded one million this year. Many people can't help but ask: "Why is it that backed by the domestic FAW Group, the development of SAIC passenger cars is no better than that of several private car companies that have struggled with themselves?" ”
The life of the independent brand, but the disease of the joint venture brand
MG is a brand established after SAIC Group acquired the British MG Rover Company, unlike Volkswagen and GM, MG is 100% owned by SAIC Motor, although it has British blood, it is a real Chinese blood and independent brand. Roewe is a Chinese brand established by SAIC Motor in 2006, which means "innovation honor, prestige all over the world". The two brands are from extraordinary backgrounds and are destined to break through the Chinese auto market, but this may be more of the wishful thinking of SAIC.
Before 2010, the Chinese people on their own brands with "cottage, low" prejudice, MG, Roewe although the origin is extraordinary, but also can not avoid being treated as ordinary independent brands by the Chinese people. Saic, who has been enjoying the wind and water for more than ten years under the protection of Volkswagen and GM, obviously feels good about himself. At the end of 2009, mg brand officially launched its first car, MG6, at that time, the guidance price was 128,880-192,800 yuan. What is this concept? In the same period, the guiding price of Langyi was 11.28-16.48 million yuan.
Almost everything, Chinese made is even more expensive than the German man-made?! Many people may have accepted it now, but 10 years ago, it was bound to be a joke. If SAIC passenger cars bear the pressure, they may be able to walk out of a high-end road of their own brands. Unfortunately, whether it is MG or Roewe, it is constantly forced to reduce the price under market pressure, which is equivalent to self-depreciation.
Of course, the price reduction is not only forced by market pressure, but more importantly, SAIC passenger cars are difficult to get their hands on their own technology. Taking the three major parts of fuel vehicles as an example, the three major parts of many models of SAIC passenger cars are from the technology eliminated by Volkswagen, and even the new cars in the past two years have models with dry double clutches. Hiding under the "shade" of the public and the general for too long, but losing their ability to face the wind and rain.
Where can it bear fruit everywhere?
Of course, in order to save the decline of "pro-son", SAIC Motor has also made a lot of efforts, one of which was the launch of the Roewe RX5 in 2016. In that year, SAIC and Alibaba cooperated to launch the Roewe RX5, known as the first Internet car, equipped with the Zebra Zhixing 1.0 system jointly developed by SAIC and Ali. At that time, it was not only a stage of the rapid development of the Internet, but also a period of domestic SUV boom, and the Roewe RX5, which stepped on the wind outlet, did have a period of time.
The MG brand also had a reborn change a few years ago. In 2017, MG launched the MG ZS, a small SUV that starts at only 73,800 yuan, with a young look and a high enough price-performance ratio to make this car popular with young people. The MG ZS is also one of the most popular models of the MG brand, and it even ranked third in the SUV sales list last month with 24,581 units. Also in 2017, MG 6 replaced with a new family-style design and introduced the Zebra Smart Walk system, which also set off a wave of enthusiasm among young consumers.
In the field of new energy vehicles that have developed rapidly in recent years, SAIC Passenger Cars has also entered the market earlier, Roewe has launched E50, Ei5 and other models early, and in 2018, it has launched a high-end pure electric SUV Roewe MARVEL X. At the end of last year, SAIC Passenger Car, Alibaba and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech jointly established Zhiji Automobile, and this year it independently established Feifan Automobile with the R series models of the Roewe brand.
Zhiji, Feifan, plus Roewe and MG, the savoy passenger cars that bloom everywhere can be described as ambitious for the cake of new energy. Because from more than 40,000 Clavi CLEAR to more than 400,000 Zhiji L7, SAIC passenger cars have basically covered the price range of mainstream models. But when it blossoms, it is bound to bear fruit?
Step out of the "shade" to really stand up
Regardless of whether the practice of "blossoming everywhere" is correct, after all, the rich SAIC Group is still slightly different from other car companies, and the author believes that what SAIC Passenger Vehicles urgently needs to solve is to gain a foothold in the underlying technology. The tree is high and deep, and every powerful car company must have its own unique underlying technology as a support.
In recent years, although SAIC passenger cars have grown, but from the hardware, design can always see some of the shadow of Volkswagen, the car machine has been backed by Ali, it can be said that in the core product force, SAIC passenger cars have not been rooted in their own "roots". In the era of fuel vehicles, this lack of technology makes it difficult for brands such as MG and Roewe to stand out in the competition with competitors. In the face of the upcoming tram era, if you do not have your own core technology, it is likely to be abandoned by the times.
For example, Tesla Model 3 once shortened the braking distance of 100 kilometers by 6 meters through OTA 3 years ago, which is the effect of self-research. There will be more and more intelligent configurations in the future of cars, and if this is not what you do, that is not what you do, then there will be various constraints when OTAs optimize the vehicle experience.
Write at the end
In the 2021 Fortune China 500 ranking, SAIC Motor has slipped from 7th place in 2020 to 12th place, which can be described as mired in negative growth. The author believes that the market of SAIC's joint venture brands has become saturated, and whether it can break through upward depends on whether the independent brand can really stand up.
Yu Jingmin once said when he was working at SAIC Passenger Car: "We are SAIC passenger cars, referred to as superior cars, and only build superior cars." The author believes that the current "superior" is almost meaningless from superior, but I hope that in the near future, SAIC Motor will be able to raise its eyebrows and breathe again because of SAIC passenger cars.